is a nice guy, the senior partner I most often work with. He’s pushing sixty but still filled with energy and savvy. He’s also on his third wife, but not of the trophy variety. Lee was his high school sweetheart, and they found each other again at their thirtieth college reunion. His first wife died too young. His next marriage was short-lived and pure rebound. This one seems solid and happy.
Buff understands about marriage, but he’s never let that stop him from staying late. And he’s never let my marriage influence him to give me a pass, either.
He glanced at his watch. “Mervin Pedersen wants a conference call in fifteen minutes. For the record, he says he likes you and wants you in court, so he wants you on the call. I told him that was our plan all along.”
Hearts don’t sink. It’s physically impossible. On the other hand, they sometimes feel as if they do. Witness mine.
I nodded as if I was happy at this news. “So he’s determined to go ahead with suing the FDA?”
“He’s decided to let us handle whatever we decide together. This could be worth a lot of money to the firm, and I plan to let you bill for a majority of the hours. That should provide the boost you need.”
I knew what boost Buff was talking about. The next step in my career is a promotion to equity partner, where I’ll share in the firm’s profits, resulting in a significant increase in compensation, as well as attain a new level of job security. I’m young for this, and to get there I have to prove once and for all that I can bring major income into the firm and have every intention of continuing to do so until I drop dead at my desk.
Buff tilted his balding head. “Were you heading somewhere?”
“Robin wanted me to come home and help pick a new housekeeper, but we both know she’ll pick the one she likes best anyway.”
“Wise man. She’ll understand if you stay later?”
I nodded. She would understand. She wouldn’t agree, but she would understand what was behind my choice. I’d told her often enough, especially lately.
Buff was nodding along with me, and we probably looked like a couple of bobblehead dolls. “When I had to work late as a young man I had a system. I added up the hours when I should have been home with Nan, my first wife, multiplied by ten and sent flowers worth that much. Or sometimes I took her to 1789 in Georgetown when the figure got high enough. If I tried that with Lee she would divorce me. She can’t be bribed or cajoled.”
Lee Buffman has a lot in common with my wife.
“Robin’s going out of town to work for the next few months,” I said, since letting Buff know right now might cushion the blow when I started leaving work earlier. “She has an opportunity she can’t afford to miss.”
“Tell me again what she does? Something to do with flowers, right?”
I managed not to wince. “The garden’s more of a hobby. She’s a photographer, a photojournalist.” I realized he needed a little more, and I’m not ashamed to brag about my wife. “That’s how we met back in 2000, during the Gore-Bush election recount. She was there as a freelancer taking photos. One of them made its way to U.S. News & World Report. She’s had others in Time, People.” That last, of course, was a photo spread of Cecilia.
“You have young children.” It wasn’t a question.
“Not that young. Ten and twelve. I may be working from home a bit more than usual in the next few months, but we’re hiring the housekeeper to take up the slack.”
“Slack doesn’t begin to cover it, Kris. If I was lucky I saw my children on weekends. Then, by the time they hit puberty, they weren’t around on weekends anymore. Now I have grandchildren I rarely see.” He paused, looked wistful just long enough, and then grinned. “Truth is, I never did like little kids all that much.”
I laughed, because whether he liked kids or not, the story, like all Buff’s stories, was purely for effect, one of his friendly little object lessons. They worked especially well in a courtroom.
“I need you for that call,” he said, getting back to business. “And you need to be there for your own reasons.”
“I’ll call Robin and let her know.”
He clapped me on the back. “Good man.”
In my office I loosened my tie, a Father’s Day gift last summer from Pet and Nik. If you look closely you see that the pattern is actually hands clasped, dozens in each row, but from a distance it looks like just another geometric exercise. Last week Robin told me the tie is like life. You have to examine both carefully to see how closely woven we humans are, but the truth is always right there if we look for it.
Robin isn’t particularly philosophical, or at least she wasn’t. Nothing is quite the way it used to be before she began the slow crawl toward her fortieth birthday. How much of that was a factor in her decision to follow Cecilia around the country? How much was Talya’s death or her own brush with it? I guess it hardly matters.
I dialed our home phone and let it ring repeatedly. If she was in the garden it might take her a few moments to get to her feet and inside, find where she’d left it and answer. I was about to try her cell, even though she rarely remembers to carry it, when she picked up.
“Kris? Are you in the car?”
That was becoming as common a salutation as “hello.”
“I wish. I got caught just as I was walking out. I doubt I’ll get out of here in the next hour. Can you go ahead without me? I’ll just have to trust your judgment on who to hire.”
She ignored that. “I just hung up with your mother.”
I put the phone on speaker and my head in my hands. “I was going to tell you about that tonight.”
“You canceled the trip to Prague? Without talking to me first?”
“I wanted to make sure I could actually get most of our money back before I told you. By the time I talked to somebody at the airlines it didn’t make sense to do anything but cancel. The rep was willing to bend a few rules and help us, and I wasn’t sure the next one would be so accomodating.”
“Ida says you have to prepare for a trial? She’s very unhappy. She called me to see if there was anything I could do.” Robin gave a humorless laugh. “That was the only funny part of the call.”
I let that pass. “If everything goes well maybe we can get over there in the spring for a few days.”
“But Lucie’s whole family will be there at Christmas. Last week your mother emailed a list of places she and your father want to take us while we’re all together, places your family came from, elderly relatives we’ll only meet this once. This means everything to them, especially Gus. He’s seventy-two, and he needs you to see him as a success, Kris. He left everything behind when he fled, including his best chance to be an artist people will remember. Now he’s getting a little of the recognition he deserves at last. He needs you to see that before he dies.”
For a woman who had once refused to express herself, Robin had come a long way. “Do we have to do this over the phone?”
“Please
